At the time of this writing, I’ve managed the email marketing accounts of 21 different companies across 8 industries in 7 different countries.
It’s no secret that email marketing is one of the most frequently used marketing tactic. It has a long, proven record of success. However, it’s also what companies use ineffectively.
If you’re curious, below is a tabulation of the industries and countries. I also included a number (#) in parenthesis to indicate the count of companies in that industry or country.
| Industry | Country |
| Construction (1) | Australia (2) |
| eCommerce (4) | Canada (6) |
| Health (7) | Hong Kong (3) |
| Marketing (2) | Philippines (4) |
| Outsourcing (1) | Spain (1) |
| Recruitment (1) | UK (1) |
| Retail (1) | US (5) |
| SaaS (4) |
Insights from 21 Different Email Marketing Accounts
Below is a summary of the insights I learned:
- All companies — whether they are a B2B / B2C; or industry; or country — know the value of collecting email addresses. That’s why they all have email marketing softwares.
- Only 6 out of 21 companies (~28%) are segmenting their database.
- Out of the 6, only 1 was from the Philippines — which is actually one of the big corporations in the country.
- The rest are from the US, UK, and Canada
- Only 2 companies (~9%) are using some form of automation.
- These 2 companies are from the US and Canada
- That means there is no Philippine company using automation
- Only 1 company (from the US) is using lead nurturing.
(Note that these are from when I first handled their email marketing)
These numbers aren’t exactly startling. In fact, it actually matches the statistics you’ll find when you research on this topic.
Here’s another take on my findings:
- Only a single company has a lead management strategy in place.
- 20 out of 21 companies only use a single type of email: a newsletter promotion
- Only 1 company is incorporating “educational content” in their newsletters; all others are purely for sales purposes (e.g. new products, discounts, promos)
- The two companies using automation uses it for an auto-responder (i.e. a thank you email after an action like a subscription to the newsletter or a signup)
- Only 4 are actively promoting being part of their email list; only 2 have “offers” apart from “subscribing to newsletter”
The only company that is the exemption to all these is a quite rare. In fact, this company is using HubSpot. The owner has everything in place and is only looking to further optimize their usage. The company already have blogging and podcasting as part of its content marketing strategy. It also makes marketing offers (lead magnets) and nurturing emails. They are also experimenting on lead scoring already when I got onboard.
Don’t be like these companies. Look at your own email marketing strategy today.
If you don’t know where to start, that’s ok. You’re normal.
You can start by asking yourself these questions:
- Do you have a way to segment your database?
- Do you have a system in place to grow your email database?
- How are you promoting / telling other people about your mailing list?
- What types of emails are you sending?
- Are they promotional in nature?
- Or are they educational?
- Do you have automations setup?
At the end of the day, email marketing is still the single, most effective way for companies to affect their bottomline.
And while the technology for email marketing is becoming better and cheaper, the usage of these by most companies remain primitive. They are still not using it effectively.